Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a planned series about Church Street in Indianola.
Ronnie Ward was about 15 years old when he first began to frequent Church Street in Indianola.
“The reason I would be up here on Saturday night, I would be shining shoes at Bell’s Shoe Shop,” Ward told The Enterprise-Tocsin during an interview this week. “On Saturday nights, there were people everywhere.”
That was about 1973, the first full decade of the desegregated South that saw many hotbeds of commerce like Church Street begin to dissipate.
In its heyday, Church Street was like its own little town. In fact, Ward said that the entertainment strip was known by most in Indianola as “Uptown.”
“On Saturday, when you leave downtown, and you didn’t have to work, you come Uptown,” he said. “Church Street was named the uptown community, where everybody put on their best rags.”
There were restaurants, theaters, doctors’ offices, barber shops, juke joints and even a chapel for prayer and some probably much-needed confession.
It was a street that rarely slept.
“If you came down, there would be people walking, partying and having a lot of fun, and it still could be that way, with a little protection,” Ward said.
Ward is the owner of the Cozy Corner Café, one of the only original buildings still standing from the old days. The building served as a model for the Delta juke joint replica at the Two Mississippi Museums.
Serving a clientele that enjoys a hearty post-midnight feast, Ward keeps odd hours. He fires up the grill at around 6 p.m., and his peak hours for serving food are typically between midnight and 3 a.m.
That was until July of this year when the City of Indianola ordered a midnight curfew in the wake of a shooting at the corner of Church Street and Second Street that took three lives and injured several others.
The massacre happened around midnight when Ward’s regulars were starting to fill the café.
When Ward heard that
shots had been fired, he said that he and his customers sheltered in place.
Later, people began coming inside, and they told him that bullet-riddled bodies were lying in the street a few blocks away.
“That sent a chill down my spine,” he said. “I almost came to tears. I had never seen a violent act of that stature before.”
Even though the shooting took place closer to the Sunflower County Courthouse, Church Street took the brunt of the blowback from the shooting.
A club operating just up the street from the Cozy Corner had attracted most of the crowd there that night.
Less than 24 hours later, the city had declared a state of emergency and instituted the midnight curfew.
During that meeting, Mayor Ken Featherstone announced ambitious plans for Church Street, including a revitalization of the area, calling for new restaurants, novelty shops, coffee shops, open air markets, lofts and more tourism markers.
Last week, the board agreed to move the curfew to 1 a.m. at the request of Ward and a couple hundred petitioners.
Ward said that the curfew was never the answer, and the 1 a.m. push does little to help him recover the cash he’s losing from those seeking food in the wee hours of the morning.
“When you get cut off from where you can’t get your revenue in here, when you say you’re just going to lock it down, that’ll kill anything. If you lock 82 Highway down, it’ll kill it,” Ward said.
Ward and the mayor do agree at least on one point, and that is that Church Street has potential for redevelopment.
“Church Street can be a vibrant community if we get the right resources down here from the city,” Ward said. “People need to know that Church Street is not a liability to the city. If they would invest in Church Street, Church Street is an asset to the city.”
Walking the sidewalks of Church Street at times is akin to strolling through a ghost town.
Ward points to abandoned structures, shells of old buildings and empty lots that used to flow with liquor, food and money.
“Alberta’s Café was where all of the Lewis Grocery truck drivers and all of the Ludlow people would come in between shifts,” Ward said.
A shoeshine. A shave. Dinner after midnight. Breakfast at 2 a.m.
Ward’s Cozy Corner is a living tribute to that night life that he says makes Church Street a historic strip that has yet to realize its potential as a destination spot.
Entering Church Street from Second, there’s a historic marker recognizing Riley B. King. There’s a newer, trendier brown sign at the intersection.
Cross the tracks, and things are different, Ward said.
One historical marker has been damaged and is out for repair. It sits below older, green street signs.
“Here you have a historical marker that’s telling you about the historical Church Street district, and then you go downtown where they have the nice brown Church Street signs,” Ward said. “Look at the Church Street sign they have here. For it to be a historical marker here, it should be one of the new street signs.”
Ronnie Ward points to the street sign at the corner of Mill Street and Church Street as an example where he says the entertainment strip has been neglected by the city. Photo by Bryan Davis/Emmerich Newspapers/Copyright 2024
Ward points toward Hannah Street, where Historic Club Ebony was recently renovated and enjoys crowds for events, often on weekends.
He said that police presence, just a stone’s throw away there, is noticeably higher than on Church Street during peak hours.
It’s that, Ward claims, and not a curfew that will help Church Street live again.
“Church Street still could be safe,” he said. “The only thing you have to do is have police presence, because most people who are on Church Street are law-abiding citizens.”
If the curfew stays in place, Ward said, more businesses in the area will die.
“You’re killing this street,” he said. “You’ve got to open the street and protect the street.”
Ward was limited to two minutes the last time he spoke to the board of aldermen.
He plans to return there next week to ask that the curfew be lifted altogether.
In the meantime, he said that he would like to meet with city officials to see where they might meet eye to eye on redevelopment strategies for the street.
Ward said that with his fifty years of living and breathing Church Street culture and the city’s vision, there may be hope to resurrect a ghost town.
“I’ve got some input to say in this district, and I would love for the mayor to come down and we share (ideas),” Ward said.
